January is just the perfect time to de-clutter the house – the latest buzzword for sorting out your stuff!

You can start small – drawer by drawer and progress to room by room. My husband has started sorting through 20yrs of accumulated stuff and the kids are getting into it too. Despite moving countries several times he has still managed to move things we don’t use with him!

There’s the throw out pile, the donate pile but then there’s that “I might need it one day and I’m not ready to part with it” pile… and we all have one of those.

Do you ruthlessly chuck it out? Sell it on Trade Me for a fraction of its value?

This is where Hire Things comes in. List your things for hire then you get to keep them and continue to get value from them by hiring them out to others in your community and making some extra cash. It makes good economic and environmental sense.

Today is the day you get to put them to use. Dust them off, check they works and list them on Hire Things for people in your neighbourhood to hire. You don’t need to sell it and your neighbour doesn’t need to buy one.

You make money, he saves money and you both do positive things for the environment!

A recent report put out on climate change has called for a fifth of all household spending to be converted to hiring and renting. The report along with current trends of consumers questioning their spending is great news for New Zealand’s Hire Things who are ideally placed to take advantage of this new consciousness.

Commissioned by the British government the Waste & ResourcesAction Programme (Wrap) says that overcoming our obsession with owning goods could be a “secret weapon” in meeting climate change targets.

“This is the first piece of research which shows the significant impact to the economy and the environment resource efficiency has”said Liz Goodwin, WRAP CEO.

The report identifies £143 billion of annual expenditure on goods that could have been used for longerinstead of throwing them away early and buying new products.Using items for their full lifespan could save British consumers £47 billion a year.

By Sharing seldom used products with a number of people, the productivity of the product will be increased and the consumption of natural resources in the production stage reduced

Hiring instead of buying would cut emissions by about 2 per cent, of CO2 a year, through a fall in manufacturing and lower consumption of raw materials.

The research has important messages on the reduction of ownership of goods and getting lifetime optimization from our purchases.

“Why would anyone want to own that many things anyway? We need to have the confidence that we can get things when we need them but we don’t need to have them sitting beside us every day.”Said Liz Goodwin, WRAP CEO

What’s exciting for New Zealand is that we can take immediate action. Hire Things, alreadywell established in the online hiring space is growing rapidly in consumer to consumer hiring. Hiring to and from each other within a community makes it easy to hire products you need with out having to buy them. Not everyone in the street needs to own a lawnmower, trailer or a tent. By sharing resources in this way you get much higher value from the things you own and purchases can be better quality,getting their lifetime use before becoming landfill.

Hire Things already has 8000+ members making a difference not just to their own wallets but to the environment and the economy too.

You no longer have to sell the things you own to make money out of them!

Now you can make extra dollars and keep your stuff by hiring out your things online.

Many of us have “things” sitting round waiting to be used. Hiring them out in your community gives you some extra income, saves someone else having to buy one, keeps the cash in your local area and is great for the environment. Benefits all around.

One of the reasons behind Hire Things is the fact that hiring is such a great sustainable business model… both environmentally and socially.

If you look at the 3 R’s… Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… hire businesses demonstrate most, if not all of these….

Reduce: Hiring provides an alternative to excessive consumption / consumerism. Hire businesses buy good quality gear that will last a long time. They can even afford new gear that is leading edge in fuel or power efficiency and emissions (for example, most rental & leasing car companies offer hybrid vehicles).

Reuse: They let lots of people use it, meaning people don’t have to buy stuff that doesn’t get used much, or buy cheap goods that end up on the landfill after only a few uses. They also employ / contract in people to maintain & repair the equipment, giving jobs/employment as well as extending the life of the gear. As gear is well maintained, it means it can be sold onto a consumer once it passes it’s effective hire use-by-date, giving it yet another life.

Recycle: Because hire businesses tend to stay at the leading edge of the equipment they use, as recyclable equipment becomes more prevalent, hire businesses are likely to lead the way in bringing this equipment into use. By being used and visible to consumers, this also serves to help this type of equipment become mainstream. One would hope also that it is businesses that seek to adopt good practices around recycling.

Resource Sharing: Hiring is all about resource sharing, and that is what excites us about what we are doing… creating a space where people work together, using things, to make life better now.

Proven to make sense: Hire & rental businesses are one of the oldest forms of businesses around, and are truly one of the greenest in our society. It is something they should be proud of, and something we as consumers should keep in mind as we more and more want to make better, smarter, more sustainable lifestyle decisions.

In a world of increasing consumerism, mixed with growing concerns about social and environmental sustainability, hiring and renting stands out as being the smartest form of business… to share resources amongst many people.

Some links on hiring and renting as a sustainable choice:

Hire or rental companies offer you everything under the sun. You only need pay for the time you use it. When you don’t need it, someone else covers the cost of that item, because they’re now using it. Why pay for a lawn mower that spends 167 hours per week in the garage, and 1 hour being used. Wouldn’t you rather pay for just the hour of use?http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/01/ecotip_product.php